Proposal to Strip Junipero Bike Lane for Additional Parking Is Lacking in Imagination

When 2nd District Councilmember Jeannine Pearce took office, she was hearing the Parking Warriors very clearly: they wanted more spaces, dammit. And she said she would provide them. 100 to be exact. All within her first 100 days.

Well, that latter part has long passed but she has quietly garnered the ability to acquire more spaces as confirmed by the City’s Parking Operations team—by removing the only direct access to the beach between Belmont Shore and DTLB through stripping Junipero of the buffered bike lane to add diagonal parking between Broadway and Ocean.

For one, it makes a city trying to become the world’s most bike-friendly city look like a joke. Even more, this hasty project will not garner Pearce nor the angry folks circling around for parking 100 additional spots; we’re looking at maybe fifteen more and that’s pushing it.

But I want to come to a bridge here with the many folk who detest and know of my very…

Very public distaste for catering to the almighty car over humans and other forms of transportation. And when I say I want to come to a bridge, I really mean this.

Admittedly, you are not going to ever hear me cheer or support widened roads or parking structures and lots because those things aren’t viable for our future. (It’s high time that the auto industry recognizes that their competitors are no longer other car companies but organizations like Apple and Google—and that’s because driverless vehicles will be more common much sooner than we think, which means putting large amounts of money into individually, human-operated cars isn’t economically or socially smart.)

So before I start building this bridge, I will be forthright in saying this is not me supporting the creation of space for cars over humans. However, I will admit that areas of Long Beach were horribly designed for their times.

During the 1960s and 70s, Long Beach ushered in a plethora of development by allowing developers to include on-street parking in their parking requirements. This was, obviously, appealing for developers since it dramatically reduced the cost of construction. However, come fifty years later, we have neighborhoods like Bluff Heights and Alamitos Beach that have buildings with 20 or 30 units and deeply limited parking; pair this with skyrocketing rents (equating to more people sharing a single room and bringing their cars with them, making units have more vehicles than imagined attached to them) and the increase in infrastructure toward the individual vehicle rather than public transportation (bringing in the all-too-common theme of You Can’t Get Around Without a Car in SoCal), and you have a nightmare.

I get it.

But Pearce’s proposal is wrought with a lack of creativity—for both bicyclists and drivers.

Firstly, I want to return to my point about the Junipero bike lane. It is the sole access to the beach by bike between the Shore and DTLB. Every weekend, I see family after family using it to get to the car-free zone that is the Beach Bike Path. Every day, I see countless folk riding to and from yoga on the bluff. Cutting this off to offer a handful of parking spaces is utterly regressive.

Even more, if Pearce is looking at diagonal parking, she should be looking at 3rd Street. And no, I don’t mean removing the bike lane from that street; I mean removing the eastbound traffic from 3rd and directing it Appleton and Broadway.

Yup: couple Appleton (for eastbound traffic) and 3rd Street (for westbound traffic since 3rd becomes a west-only street at Alamitos anyway). This frees up a lane on 3rd, allowing diagonal parking on both sides, keeps the bike lane, and still continues to give families and casual riders safe access to the beach and Retro Row on their bikes.

But my ultimate point will not be framed by parking for individually owned cars: we cannot eradicate transit ways that are far more viable for the future population, provide safe access for families and individuals seeking to explore the shoreline, and environmentally sound in favor of an infrastructural band aid.

So why would I support this? Because in the end, that diagonal parking is not going to be there. It will give way to green space, shared space, biking space, walking space, and much more because most of the future population will not own cars. And no, I do not mean fifty years from now. I don’t even mean fifteen. The more and more we invest in transit (which we are doing), the more we care about how we travel (which we are doing), the more and more tech companies look at eradicating traffic-related deaths through self-driving vehicles (which they are), the less of our precious land we will have to give to the almighty-but-dying-slowly individually owned and driven car.

6 Comments

So how much longer until the driverless and ownerless car hits the scene? In the meantime something creative has to be done about parking. I like your suggestion a regarding 3rd Street. Work is scheduled to begin on Broadway which may provide some relief. Hopefully it will slow down the speeding. I also like what they did on Icean in District 3.

Thanks so much for this! I just sent an email to Pearce’s office: here’s the text in case it’s useful to anyone else (hurriedly written, so forgive any awkward grammar and such).
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I’ve lived in Alamitos Beach for 10 years, and in the 2nd District for 20 years. I am deeply concerned by your proposal to remove the bike lane between Broadway and Ocean on Junipero. This is not the right solution to our parking problems, and sets a horrible example for our efforts to become more bike-friendly in Long Beach.

As an Alamitos Beach resident I know how frustrating it can be sometimes to find parking in our neighborhood, particularly at night, the legacy of bad planning regulations and the simple fact that many of our buildings in the neighborhood were built before private car ownership (my house at 2nd and Cerritos was built in 1911, for instance). But the response to this should be more visionary than getting rid of the only bike lines in the area that provide ocean access.

Long Beach should be the #1 city for biking, period. The weather is perfect and the terrain is flat in much of the city (including our neighborhood). More bikes in the long run helps shape a future with less car ownership, and it makes a more immediate impact on people’s transportation decisions.

In this era when we are facing the dire effects of climate change and a federal government that will not acknowledge the problem. what signal does it send to remove bike lanes for a few parking stalls? This just feeds the current administration’s view that literally saving the planet is too inconvenient, bad for business, etc.

Please, do not let a few complainers lead you to push for this backwards, short-sighted “solution.” There are better ways to address parking concerns.

I’m very thankful for you Brian for putting this on blast. Walkable/bikable cities are so rare but we seem to take it for granted how easily we can lose them. As a resident/voter of Ms Pierce’s district I’ve gone ahead and gave my input to her office. If I wanted a lifestyle of driving everywhere I’d move back to Irvine.

Modern parking planning methods agree with much of what you said so you may find that the “parking warriors” have more in common with you than you think. 😉 Recent parking planning methods understand the importance of encouraging alternate modes of transport in order to cut down on the need for parking. They make the best use possible of existing parking. They support Don Schoup’s concepts of right-sizing parking supplies. They use data to determine how much parking a new building will need to prevent parking spillover onto area streets. Automated parking can dramatically reduce the amount of space needed for parking and also makes it easier to re-purpose that space when/if parking is less needed. Our city was refusing to look at any of this, hence the “parking warriors”. It hurts everyone that people are spending an increasing amount of time circling for parking, including the “bike people”. We now have a parking study coming as a result of lawsuits. We hope you will participate. Oh, and that study covers AB up to Junipero. I have no idea why the city is pushing to change Broadway, 4th, and Junipero before the professional eval is in.